


Paved with Bad Intentions (The Road out of Hell)

by Vaznetti



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Gen, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope, SPN S3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-08 05:08:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12247608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vaznetti/pseuds/Vaznetti
Summary: Sam finds a way to save Dean from Hell; it involves sending them both to a galaxy far far away.  Set in SPN Season 3, and some time before ANH.





	Paved with Bad Intentions (The Road out of Hell)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/gifts).



> Many thanks to musesfool and Maidenjedi for beta-reading!

"Sorry, Dean, sorry," Sam muttered; he was almost finished with the mandala, his brother’s body lying in the center, hands over his heart. He’d be out cold at least another hour, but the figures had taken longer to draw on the parking lot concrete and there were still the candles to light and the incantation to recite. He was pretty sure it didn’t need to be chanted or sung or anything. Pretty sure. 

The wind picked up for a moment, scattering dried leaves across the chalk lines and curves. Sam picked them off, careful not to smudge his work. Seven candles, then, and he walked carefully through to stand next to Dean. This was going to work: it was going to have to work. He had thought at first that he would send Dean through on his own and stay behind to fight whatever might turn up looking for them, but he didn’t know where _beyond the powers of Hell_ would be.

Sam took a deep breath. Dean was going to be pissed when he woke up, but at least this way Sam would be there to explain. As he began to speak, the mandala began to glow, first red, the lightening and brightening to a white glow he had to squint his eyes against, hoping to hell that no one came to see what it was until he was done. Only a few more lines to go, and on the closing words he felt the circle swell with power as if it was pushing him up from below the ground. Then came the explosion, not heat but light, as if the universe was rushing past his eyes and he was thrown upward into something blacker than the night sky above him. He reached for Dean but his brother’s hand slipped through his fingers as they fell upward into the void.

He opened his eyes again in twilight, lying on his back and staring up. He blinked and blinked again: two moons – two moons! – stubbornly hung there in the violet sky. He scrambled to his feet, relief and panic rising together into his throat, staring around himself at the scrubby grass and dry brown soil. The ground around his feet was burnt black in a circle as large as the mandala he had drawn, but more than just that had come through with them, he saw now: chunks of the parking lot blacktop scattered on the ground, a few square feet of chain-link fence, a garbage can rolling on its side. A big Jeep just in front of him, and beyond that, the Impala. He caught his breath – thank God it had come with them, Dean would have killed him if he had left it behind -- but where the hell _was_ Dean?

A hand pulled Sam around by the shoulder and there Dean was, thank God, Sam thought, as his brother shook him so hard his teeth rattled in his mouth. "Where the hell are we, Sam? What the _fuck_ have you done?"

"I..." Sam started, _I saved you_ on the tip of his tongue. "I found a spell," he said. "Something that would get you away, take you where all the demons of Hell couldn’t find you. You’re free, Dean. The crossroads demon won’t find you here." He swallowed. "I saved you."

Dean’s hands dropped, and he took a step back. "OK," he said. He looked around them, at the grass silver in the strange moonlight, and the chunks of parking lot scattered around. More than just the lot, Sam saw now: there were four cars, and pieces of a few more. "OK. Right. But where _are_ we, Sam?"

"I don’t know," Sam said. Two moons, he thought, two moons, and sky more like purple than blue, and the stars he could see were all different. He took another breath, trying not to panic.

Dean turned away. "OK. Well, least you brought the car."

It didn’t take them long to get started: they scouted around until Dean spotted a dry riverbed that it looked like they could drive down, and filled the Impala’s tank from a Ford pickup missing its back half, and put the rest into a five-gallon gas can that had come through with them. "I don’t think we’ll find a gas station out here," Sam said.

Dean looked up at the lights of an airplane or something passing overhead. "No," he agreed. "But there’s gotta be something around here somewhere."

They crawled along: Dean made Sam walk in front of the car to check the riverbed for stones or logs or sandy patches. "Why me?" he protested.

"You don’t think I’m letting you drive my baby off-road in the dark," Dean said. Sam wondered if he should try to make a joke out of that, but Dean had already turned away and climbed in.

It wasn’t too bad, and he was pretty sure Dean would get tired of driving at 3 miles an hour and let him back in. He clung to that though, doing his best to ignore the plants that didn’t look like anything he’d seen before: it was just because the light was funny, he told himself. The two moons were bright enough to leave faint double shadows on the ground. Another set of lights passed overheard: something off about them this time, like they were slower than they should be.

The third set were low, low enough for him to see the boxy gray shape they were attached to, something his brain told him had no more business flying than the Impala did. At the back there was a bright white rectangle, like nothing he’d seen before. He went back to lean into the window. "Dean," he said, "I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more,"

Dean didn’t smile. "I saw it," he said. He pushed open the door with such force that Sam had to jump backward and almost fell. Dean grabbed him, half to keep him upright and half to give him another shake. "Goddamnit, Sam, what were you thinking? What did you do to yourself? You don’t know where we are, you don’t have any way to get yourself home--"

"Dean, no. Stop it. I'm not going anywhere." He took Dean's shoulders. "Don't you get it? Fuck it, Dean, do you think I would just let you send yourself to Hell?"

"You know I don’t have a future here, Sam, I don’t have a future anywhere. You know you can’t save me."

"No, I don’t know that, Dean," Sam said. "What I know is that I have to try."

Dean let go and tried to step back, but Sam was holding him still now. "I’m not--" he started.

"If you say you’re not worth it, Dean, I swear to God, I’ll..." He trailed off. "You’re my brother, Dean. Don’t you get it?"

Dean looked away and Sam let go of him. "Yeah, I get it, Sam. I get it. But I don’t have to like it." He got back into the car. "Let’s go. I think there are some lights up there."

It took them hours to reach the lights, even after the riverbed emptied into a great flat lakebed and Dean let Sam get back into the car. One of the moons set and the other one faded in the sky as the sun rose, big and red, on their left-hand side. The buildings of the town, port, whatever the hell it was, were low and white; as they got closer they saw another... another spaceship land on the far side of the town. "Shit," Dean said.

"A spaceship, Dean. Come on. It’s a little cool, you gotta admit."

"It’s a little cool," Dean agreed. "But I am still not OK about you doing this."

He drove them carefully into a gap between the buildings. There were a few people out, and some things that were definitely not people, like the hairy one with a cluster of eyes like an insect’s in the middle of its face, or the blue ones with tentacles on their heads, or the one with the snake head and six arms. No matter what they were, they all turned to watch the Impala drive past. A thing with three eyes in a goat's face was standing at the next corner.

"Dean," Sam said. Had he gone wrong, he suddenly wondered. Had he sent them both to Hell?

"I see them, I see them."

"What _are_ they?" It didn't feel wrong here, but maybe it wouldn't, maybe he wouldn't be able to tell until too late.

"You saw the spaceships," Dean said. His voice was very even. "These must be the aliens."

Every head turned as they drove through the town. Even the humans. Even the one with two heads. "We should have hidden the car," Sam said. "Everyone is looking at it."

"No."

"Dean, we don’t know where we are, we don’t know what this place is like--"

"I said no, Sam. We’re not leaving her out there." He kept driving, slowly and carefully, but the muscle in his cheek jumped as they inched through the settlement. The buildings were crowded together and the streets were narrow, like they weren’t meant for cars. They passed another four people -- four creatures, one of them had tentacles instead of a face, one of them had four arms and was blue -- who turned their heads as the Impala drove past. "Do you even know where you’re going?" Sam asked.

"A place like this is going to have a bar," Dean said, "and I need a drink." He rolled down the window, listened a moment, and turned left at the next intersection. They pulled up about a hundred yards later at a building with a wide, open door. There were more creatures standing around outside it, who all stopped to stare at the car as they parked. A couple were big and furry, one was wearing a mask over his face -- Sam thought it was a mask, maybe it _was_ his face -- one was green. Dean turned off the ignition. "Lock the door," he said, and got out.

"Dean, you can’t go in there--" Sam started, but Dean was already through the door. "You don’t have any money," he muttered. One of the furry things groaned at him. Sam sighed.

* * * 

For once, the fight really wasn’t Han’s fault. He was just hanging out at the bar, waiting for Chewie to finish getting the payment for the cargo they’d offloaded. Parietes wasn’t much of a planet, out on the edge of the Western Reaches, but they brewed a decent liquor out of some kind of cactus that grew here.

He barely even noticed the other guy coming into the cantina; he got to the bar, waited while the bartender served a few other patrons, then held up two fingers to order two shots of the local. He downed the first, shook his head slightly, and then did the second shot. The bartender turned away to mix a Castellan sour and Han raised a finger to order another shot for himself. 

It never came: the guy next to him, a Gran, fell sideways onto Han, spilling its drink on his jacket; Han pushed it away and then had to duck when the Gamorrean on the other side of the Gran threw a punch at him. _What the hell?_ he thought, as he ducked again and came up to elbow the Gamorrean in the solar plexus. She fell back against the bar and Han stepped away to give himself a little more space; a Zygerrian, with a Twi’lek in a headlock, stumbled against him, losing his balance. The Twi’lek struggled free and Han got a face-full of lekku, but it kept him away from the Gamorrean. She turned around to attack the human who Han had seen ordering a moment before. Han winced as the punch landed, knocking the guy away from the bar, but he came back up swinging. It didn’t do much good against a Gamorrean, and Han paid for his moment of distraction when the Zygerrian backed into him and a pale blue Teltior decided it was attack: the momentum of the brawl was pushing Han back away from the bar and toward the door, which was OK with him; he still wasn’t sure what he was fighting about. He saw out of the corner of his eye the other human knocking a Green Nikto backward, but missing the Kowarkian leaping for his head. "Ah, hell," Han muttered, and shot the lizard. A guy who could come back from a Gamorrean’s punch didn’t deserve to be taken out by one of those little things. 

The blaster shot made the fight pause for a second, but Han could see the Gran and his friends getting ready to face off against the Gamorrean. "Thanks," the other human said.

"No problem." Han glanced over at the other guy. "Wanna blow this joint?"

"Sounds good," the guy said. The fight was definitely starting up again, but he and the other guy didn’t seem to be its focus. It was definitely time to go. "Dean Winchester," the guy said, as they made it to the door.

"Han Solo." 

There was a third human, standing in the doorway of the cantina. He ignored Han. "What the hell, Dean?" he said. 

"Don’t you even start, Sammy," Winchester said as they pushed through into the weak sunlight.

Chewie was nowhere to be seen, which was just as well, since he’d probably be yelling at Han in pretty much the same way that Sam was yelling at Winchester. Han let their conversation ("You can’t just start hitting people--" "It worked, didn’t it?" "That’s not the _point_ , Dean," "The point is that you don’t get to decide what I do any more, Sam, get it?") fade from his attention as he noticed the groundcar just sitting there on the road outside the cantina.

It must have been ancient -- he’d seen something like it once as a kid, in the transport museum on Corellia. It sat on the ground on dusty wheels, as if it still used them to move, and had a covered cabin and screens which clanked like glass when he rapped his fingernail on it. He stuck his head in one of the windows to get a closer look at the steering mechanism and the dials, physical dials, not readouts. Speed, he guessed, and something else which might be engine output, but where was the altimeter, and what kind of engine did this thing run on? 

"Hey!" Winchester yanked on his shoulder, pulling him out of the vehicle. "Get your hands off of her!"

Han raised his arms and tried to look innocent. This belonged to _him_? "Just admiring your ride, kid."

"Yeah, well, you can admire from over there," the guy said.

"What’s something like this doing on a place like Parietes, anyway? She must be worth more than the whole spaceport put together."

Now he had the guy’s full attention. "She’s mine, that’s what she’s doing here."

"OK, OK," Han said. "I’m just saying, you don’t see something like this very often. What does she run on, some kind of solid fuel? Water, maybe? She’s in good shape, too. I know a guy who could--"

"Not interested," said Winchester. "She’s not for sale." 

But the other human, Sam, came up next to him and said, "Dean, can I talk to you for a second?" The two of them moved off, whispering together, and then Sam came back. "The Impala’s not for sale," he said. "But what if we knew where we could get some others like her?"

"There are more of them?" Han asked. 

"Not exactly like her," Winchester said. "But the same kind of thing."

"They’re clean?" Han asked.

The two guys looked at each other. "Yeah, they’re clean. And they’ll run, too." If they’d been playing sabacc, Han would have bet his hand that they were bluffing. Something like that, practically a museum piece, probably stolen -- they would be people out looking for it, and they’d never get the real value, not the way they’d have to do it.

"Fifty-fifty," Han said.

"Are you crazy?" Winchester said. "You get 10 percent for facilitating."

"Without me you don’t have a buyer," Han pointed out.

"Yeah, but like you say, she’s worth a lot of money. We’d be able to find a buyer without you."

Han caught his lower lip in his teeth. The guy wasn’t wrong, which made him wonder why they were even having this conversation. Why _did_ they need him? How hot were the goods they were trying to sell? There was something off about this deal, but the payoff would be sweet. It would make up for a poor return here, and maybe there would enough to upgrade the smuggling panels on the Falcon; what they had now couldn’t stand up to an Imperial scan. "Seventy-five twenty-five," he said. "But any extra expenses come out of your side. That’s fair." And if the goods were so hot that he had to dump everything and run... Well, he’d worry about that if it happened.

The two guys looked at each other for a moment, then nodded together. "Deal," said Winchester.

* * *

They had just finished prepping the cars they’d chosen, and Sam was grumbling about making two trips, so that they could keep the Impala with them -- like Dean would even consider leaving her out here! -- when the huge disk-thing flew overhead, hovered to release some kind of landing gear, and them came to rest on the field next to the remains of the parking lot. Dean edged over to the trunk and took out a shotgun; he checked that it was loaded and tossed it to Sam, and then took out another for himself. The spaceship let out some kind of steam as it settled, and as that cleared a ramp came down toward them and a man walked down. The guy from the bar, Han Solo. Dean’s hand tightened on the gun as he stepped forward.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he asked as Solo came forward. "Did you follow us?"

"Follow you? What are _you_ doing here?" he responded. His right hand was resting on some kind of gun strapped to his leg.

"We’re just keeping up our end of the deal," Dean said. "We’re getting the cars, like we agreed. What about you?"

"Like I said, I had some business to take care of before we took off," Solo said. "Something to pick up."

"Something to pick up here," Dean said.

"These are the coordinates," Solo said. "Or... over there a little." He gestured with his chin to the back of the parking lot area, where the ground rose into a low mound. "Nobody told me about all this stuff." He was frowning a little. "Chewie!" he shouted. There was a roar from inside the ship and Sam nearly raised the shotgun to his shoulder as some kind of huge, monstrous _thing_ came down the ramp, had to be seven feet tall and covered in shaggy fur, carrying a crossbow. Han saw him tense. "What, you’ve never seen a Wookiee?" 

"Are you kidding?" Dean said, "Sammy here might as well be part Bigfoot. Right, Sam?"

"Sure," Sam nodded.

Solo’s eyes narrowed; the joke clearly wasn’t funny to him. "Chewie, these are the coordinates, right?" The big thing, Chewie, howled something. "Yeah," he said. "There’s some kind of underground bunker in that mound, and we offered to get what was in it for a friend of ours."

Dean glanced over to Sam. "What’s in it?"

"Some kind of old junk," Solo said. "I don’t know, a friend of ours wanted it for her collection, and Chewie here said we’d pick it up."

"OK," Sam said. "So you just happened to have to come out here, where we... Where we stashed these cars, to pick up some old _junk_."

"Hey," Solo said, "I know it looks suspicious, but it’s just a weird coincidence. Right, Chewie?" The Wookiee growled at him. "Yeah, so we’ll just go in and get what we came for, and you finish up here."

"What did you come for?" Sam asked again.

Chewie growled some more. "A necklace," Solo said. "Our friend said it was buried here. Said it had something to do with the religion they used to have in this sector."

"Religion, huh?" said Dean. "So there’s some kind of magical thing buried down there." He turned to Sam. "You thinking what I’m thinking?" Then he faced Solo and pasted his best smile on his face. "So my brother and me, this kind of weird shit is sort of our specialty. How about we take a look into that little hill with you, just make sure there’s nothing to be worried about?"

"Look, Winchester, whatever’s in there has been there for about 1500 cycles. I don’t think it’s going to cause us any trouble. You just get your cars ready to go--" he said ‘cars’ like it was in a different language, "and Chewie and I will take a look at the bunker." Chewie growled something. "What kind of feeling?" Han asked. This time Chewie’s response was longer. "Nah, that’s probably the petrochemical smell. Come on, we’ll take a look. She’s your girlfriend."

He sauntered over to the edge of the field, stopping to look at a chunk of asphalt and a piece of exhaust pipe. Chewie followed closely behind.

"That Wookiee thing," Dean said, "that’s a... a person."

"I guess Solo understands him," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "I mean, you should have seen the inside of that bar. Guys with blue skin, and this little thing with three eyes, and this pig-faced thing with a right hook like you wouldn’t believe. And that’s... a spaceship." Saying it out loud didn’t make it seem more real. "An actual, real live spaceship. A fucking spaceship."

"Which we’re going to ride on," Sam said. "Unless Solo double-crosses us."

Dean shrugged. They’d talked it over again and again on the way back here, but they didn’t have a lot of options. He sure as hell wasn’t going back to that bar to make a deal with the three-eyed goat thing, whatever it was. "I don’t like that he turned up here."

"I don’t like that there’s some kind of freaky relic under that mound," Sam said. "Dean, you gotta--" He turned suddenly at a howl from Chewie and a grinding noise: Dean could see a stick or something in Chewie’s hand, and watched as the whole side of the mound caved in. Solo leaped back, but the black smoke billowing out seemed to separate into individual arms that wrapped around Chewie’s legs, knocking the Wookiee down and pulling him further into the hole. 

"Sam!" Dean tossed his gun to Sam and snatched a bag from the back of the Impala. Sam was already running toward the mound. He got there just as Solo stumbled to his feet and started toward the hole, shouting for Chewie. 

Sam pulled him back. "Wait! Don’t let it take you as well!" By then Dean was there with a flashlight; the three of them crowded into the entrance. There was a passage slanting down into the earth, clearly man-made -- or something-made, Dean corrected himself, for all he knew it had been made by those weird green insect things back in the town -- smooth-sided and round. 

"Chewie!" Solo shouted. "Can you hear me?" There was no response.

Dean pulled the EMF detector out of the bag; the shriek it gave as he pointed it down the hole made them all draw back. "There’s something down there, that’s for sure," he said. "What do you know about this thing, anyway?" 

"Uh..." Solo started. "It’s old? Maz said..." He stopped and deliberately turned away from the opening, straightening his shoulders. "It’s a tomb, Maz said, and there’s something in there she wants, a box with a necklace in it. Chewie and I had a run out here, and he agreed to pick it up for her. She collects stuff, mostly things she’s picked up herself." He turned back to the opening and stuck his head back down it. "Chewie? Chewie, you down there?"

Dean started to go through the bag: salt cartridges, a knife, a flashlight. They’d need more flashlights, maybe some rope. "Sam," he said, go get some rope from the car. We’re gonna need salt, too, and a couple more flashlights. What else, do you think?"

"Dean," Sam said, "you can’t go down there. We don’t know what’s in there."

"Sure we do. Some kind of old, angry ghost. Hey, you!" He turned to Solo. "You know how to use a shotgun?"

Solo took the gun. "A what? What’s in here, some kind of projectile?" But he handled it like he knew what he was doing, more or less.

"Salt," Dean said. "Best thing for an angry spirit. Which I bet is what you’ve got down there." He showed Solo the cartridges, and broke his own gun open to load it.

"Or what has Chewie," Solo muttered, copying him: slow, but not bad. Now that he was focused on something, he looked a little less panicky. 

"Right." Dean paused to consider how hard it would be to pull the Wookiee back up the passage. How much did he weigh? Would salt even work on a ghost out here? But hey, only one way to find out. Sam was already backing the Jeep up to the mound, in case they needed some extra muscle. He turned to tell Solo to stay behind him, and realized that the other man had already disappeared down the passage.

"Dammit," he muttered, and started after him.

"Wait!" Sam grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "I told you, you can’t go down there!"

"What the hell, Sam? Solo’s already down there, with who knows what kind of spirit!"

"I’ll go instead. It can’t be you."

"What do you mean?"

"What if there’s a connection?" Sam was still holding his arm. "This is where the two of us came through to this place. What if... What if you went down there and didn’t come back up? What if it sends you back, whatever is down there?"

"Sam," Dean started, and swallowed. "Sam, you know there’s no way out of my deal. I know you think that bringing me here would do the trick, but there’s no reason Hell can’t find me here too." Sam opened his mouth but Dean kept talking, "You have to let me go. You can’t save me, but you can let me go down there and save them."

"I’m going with you," Sam said. "And I’m going first." He pushed past Dean and started down the passage, shining his flashlight in front of him.

It was a gentle slope down, smooth and round, like it wasn’t made for feet, and the ceiling was higher than their heads. Dean tried not to wonder too much about what had made it, or how big they had been. It curved gently around to the left, so that the light from above died away. They were going carefully when there was a flash and a bang and a howl from further down below, and Sam set off running, Dean skidding down right behind him into a round chamber. The flashlight caught a bit of a rough stone ledge opposite them, piled with bones -- big bones, too big to be human, and a lot of them -- then there was a growl and a huge furry thing came flying at them as Solo’s voice shouted, "Chewie!" 

Dean rolled to the side and heard Sam doing the same: they fired together into the black smoky shape Dean had half-glimpsed behind the Wookiee. In flashes of blue light Dean could see the piled of bones against the wall, huge curved ribs and a long skull and thick vertebrae, and then he fired again into the shimmering ghost of something thick and scaly, with a long face like a bear and rings on the fingers of each clawed hand. He heard another shot from his left, and then from his right as well: the ghost-thing vanished and Sam shone the flashlight on him, and then on Chewie, the shotgun to one side, bending over Solo’s body and lifting him with a gentle moan. 

The four of them backed out of the chamber; the black cloud followed them up a few feet behind, the blue shape within it flickering in and out of existence, until the passage curved around enough to let in a little dim light and they could see shadows before them on the rounded floor. Dean took the flashlight long enough to let Sam reload.

"What was _that_?" Solo asked as Chewie set him on his feet. A growl from Chewiee was probably the same question.

"Ghost," Dean said shortly. "What do you think, Sam?"

"I think it’s going to be tough making it back up after we set the bones on fire."

"You’re going back down there?" Solo asked.

"Can’t leave it," Dean said. "It’s a danger to anyone who tries to go down there."

"Yeah, but who’s dumb enough to do that?" Chewie growled something. "OK, sure, aside from us. And yeah, Maz Kanata knows about it, but--" Chewie interrupted him again. "Have it your way, then. What is that thing?"

"Flamethrower," Dean said as he took it from the Jeep. "You lucked out. Sam and me, we’re old pros at taking care of this kind of problem. And we need to salt and burn those bones to lay the ghost of that thing."

"Lay the ghost," Solo muttered to himself. "You’ll run out of oxygen down there if you start a fire. What kind of breathing apparatus do you have?"

Dean shrugged. "We’ll just have to run for it, I guess."

"I’ve got a couple masks on the Falcon, but nothing that’s firesafe." Chewie said something. "I don’t know." He turned back to Dean. "Chewie said that the... that thing couldn’t make it back up into the light. What if we try to blast a hole that will open up the grave?" He turned back to Chewie. "You know you’re not getting that necklace Maz wanted, if we do it that way." Chewie grumbled something. "Yeah, fair enough," Solo said.

"That would make it easier," Dean said, "if we knew where the chamber was."

"I bet we know," Sam said, nodding toward the charred patch of ground where his spell had brought them through. "What are you going to do? Drop some kind of bomb on it?"

"Some kind of bomb," Solo said. "Did you hear, that, Chewie? No, kid, we’re going to blast it open with an ST2 concussion missile. Come on," he slapped Sam on the shoulder, "let’s load up the Falcon with anything you don’t want to get blown to pieces."

* * *

The kids rolled their "cars" up the Falcon’s ramp and got them secured in the Falcon’s hold quickly enough: they ended up with three to sell, plus Dean’s Impala. They’d hidden some other material under some scrub and rocks, and Sam scowled when he saw Han noticing it. Well, three of those things, actually running with their own fuel, would set these two kids up well enough, and they couldn’t complain if Han made it back to pick up the rest and sell it on before they did.

"That it?" he asked Dean, watching him finish draining the last of the fuel from the largest of the groundcars they’d picked. He wasn’t keen on having the flammable material in his hold but he could see the point that a car that could run would bring more credits than one which couldn’t. Dean nodded. "Listen, kid," Han asked, "your partners, are they going to come back looking for you any time soon?"

"Our partners?"

"Yeah, you know, the ship that got you this far? You didn’t just find these things on Parietes. The way I see it, maybe you had a disagreement, maybe they left you here, and they’ll be back soon to see if you changed your mind about it?" Although if it’d been Han, he would have left them and taken the groundcars to sell.

"No," Dean said slowly, "you don’t need to worry about our partners coming back for us." 

"Good," Han said. Dean was giving him a kind of challenging look, a look that suggested that their partners were really not going to be a problem, for anyone, ever again. Han added that look to the list of things to consider before he actually double-crossed the two guys, and he pasted an innocent grin on his face. "Glad to hear it. Let’s go take a look at those missiles."

Overall, it was a pretty simple plan: lift up about 500 meters and shoot a concussion missile straight down to the spot Sam had marked with a big white cross. Then they would wait for the dust to settle and land to finish the job. Personally Han felt that the missile would be enough to knock out whatever had been lurking down there, but Dean and Sam seemed pretty sure it would need some extra steps. 

They were a strange mix, those two. Dean had helped him load the launcher and followed Han’s explanation of how he’d modified it, but he’d also seen them look at each other when the Falcon lifted off, like they’d never been on a ship before. Dean was still clutching the arms of his chair with white knuckles. "Right," Han said. "Here we go. You ready, Chewie?" Chewie confirmed that everything was go. "Three, two, one..." A millisecond pause, and then the explosion: the shockwave lifted the Falcon and he rode it up to avoid the huge cloud of dust rising from the impact site. "Not bad, hunh?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "We’ll see what it does down there." Han circled around and tilted the Falcon down slightly to give them a better view of the ground. Dean made a noise behind him but Sam unhooked his harness and came to look out over Han’s shoulder. "The dust is already settling," he said. "How soon can you bring us back down?"

"I don’t want to clog the Falcon’s life support vents. Why?"

"They usually do something after we open up the grave," Sam said. And right on cue, there it came: another explosion, this time with the black smoke and blue flickering lightning Han had seen down in the tunnel. He struggled to keep the Falcon steady: it seemed like the smoke was reaching up to grab them. 

"You could have said that sooner," Han said. He tried lifting the Falcon out of range but it seemed like the smoke was following them up. "What was it, some kind of explosive hidden in there?"

"Something like that," Sam said. As the dust settled from the missile strike, the black smoke seemed to be thinning as well. "Looks like the sunlight is doing its job, though."

The two kinds of smoke thinned together, enough to land the Falcon on some more-or less level ground nearby. This was playing hell with her landing gear, Han knew. They made there way carefully over to the edge of the crater. Dean paused a moment to stare down into it. "I have got to get me one of those," he muttered. He skidded and clambered down the side until he could get into what was left of the burial chamber. "Definitely still some bones here to burn," he said. "You got the gas, Sam?"

Sam came down the ramp with one of the canisters they had used for the groundcar fuel. "Should we be using this up?" he asked. Chewie had been complaining nonstop about the smell from it, so Han wasn’t going to argue; anyway, the less flammable liquid on the Falcon when they took off, the better. 

He and Chewie watched Sam shake the salt over the big bones and then pour the fuel over them, while Dean stood guard with the shotgun. He still wasn’t sure what exactly they were dealing with here, but they did seem to know what they were doing. "You think Maz is gonna be upset that we didn’t get her necklace?" he asked.

"No," Chewie said. "I think we’re bringing her something much better."

"The groundcars?" Han asked. "You think she’ll want one?"

"Not the groundcars, Han." Han ducked away as Chewie tried to ruffle his hair, then jumped slightly as Sam lit the fuel and the bones went up in a huge whoosh of flame. Damn, he thought, that stuff is way too dangerous to keep in the main hold. He’d shift it to the number 2 hold, where they could open the airlock if they needed to. He watched the smoke coming out of the crater, to see if that flashing thing would appear again. Dean fired once into the cloud, but Han never saw what he was shooting at.

The sun was down and one of the moons as well by the time the fire died down and Sam and Dean came climbing up. Sam held something shiny out to Chewie. "I don’t know if it’s what you were looking for, but maybe it can be fixed? It’s not too badly melted."

"Thank you," Chewie said.

"Yeah, Maz is going to love that." Han joked as Chewie lifted it on one claw: some kind of linked chain attached to a ring of metal. It had been a ring, anyway, Han thought, but the heat had bent it and turned parts of the gold a purple-gray colour. There had been stones attached to the chain at one point, but some were missing and most of the rest cracked. Maybe next time Maz would ask someone else to run her errands.

Chewie looked up into the air a second before Han heard the engines. "Blast!" he shouted. "We’ve got company. Everyone back onto the Falcon." He didn’t look to check that Sam and Dean were following as he ran for the boarding ramp, but as he settled into the pilot’s chair he was pretty sure he heard the right number of footsteps following Chewie down the access corridor. "Strap in," he said, "this is going to be a bumpy ride."

"What’s out there?" Sam asked.

"Local trouble," Han said. "They probably heard the explosion and came out to see what was going on. This whole planet is owned by the Imperial Mining Corps." And how come these kids didn’t know that, anyway?

"So they think we were, what, stealing something?"

"We kinda were, Sam," Dean said. 

Han could feel the engines warming up, and flicked the switched to give them some uplift. "Come on," he muttered, "come on, girl." It wasn’t a completely cold start, but it was taking longer than he wanted. "One of you kids, go make yourself useful -- Chewie, show them where the lasers are."

"I’ll go," Sam said quickly.

One of the patrol ships buzzed overhead; the other was lowering its landing gear. "Great," Han said. "And Chewie, you man the blaster cannon!" Why wasn’t the Falcon starting faster? "You, Dean, get up here." He was giving instructions before the kid made it into the copilot’s seat. "See the panel above you, to the right? Lift it up. How does the wiring look?"

"The wiring," Dean said. "Uh... wait! Yeah! The, uh, it’s got a green coating on it? And another one looks loose, with a red-and-white stripe."

"Tighten that one, the red and white. But wait until my say-so to touch the other two."

"Shit," Dean muttered. "I am hotwiring a fucking spaceship."

"Three, two, now!" Han hit the thruster start again and leaned back as he felt the Falcon start to lift. Chewie howled a protest from the hatch. 

The patrol in the air fired a laser where the Falcon had just been, clipping the left nacelle. "Any time you want to hit that thing," he shouted to Sam.

"It’s a lot harder from a moving platform." Sam’s voice came over the intercom. This time his blast just missed the patrol.

"Chewie, is the targeting computer malfunctioning?" Han asked.

"Not mine," Chewie growled back from the lower cannon.

"Targeting... Oh," said Sam. How could the kid not have known about that? Now they had enough clearance for Chewie to take out the patrol that had landed: it exploded just as it was starting to lift off. Sam fired again and missed, but it had to dodge and its own missile exploded on the ground. 

Han concentrated on gaining altitude, pulling the yoke back to point the Falcon directly up. "Hold her steady," he said to Dean, "I’m passing controls to the copilot." Dean grabbed his own yoke with both hands, imitating what Han was doing. Not too bad, Han thought, and started to enter the coordinates for the hyperspace jump that would keep them safe, although Dean was looking a little green. Had these kids _ever_ been to space?

Whoever was flying the mining patrol wasn’t bad: it swung across the Falcon’s stern, but Chewie drove it back; something hit the rear shields. Then it exploded suddenly, spiralling down to add another crater to the ground below them. "Did you see that, Dean?" Sam shouted. "I hit it, I hit it!"

"Yeah, Sam. I saw it," Dean said. 

"You can relax now," Han said. "Hyperspace in three, two... one." The stars stretched out as they left realspace behind. "We’ll make Takodana in 43 hours. Would have been less, but I had to set a false trail." He glanced over at Dean. "Hey, Winchester, you need the head?"

"I'm good," Dean said. He swallowed.

"You blow chunks in the Falcon, and you're going out the airlock," Han warned him.

"No," Dean said again, "I said, I'm good." He kept staring out at the stars. "I'm good," he repeated. Han had heard that tone before, a guy at the academy who had been in a bad crash, coming out of bacta, like he still didn't believe he still had all his fingers. "You think we'll make enough to get a ship ourselves when we sell those cars?"

"Sure," Han said. "Not as good as the Falcon, obviously, I've done a lot of work on her, but you can get something. Maz’ll help us sell the groundcars, and set you guys up too. We’ll let her know you saved Chewie’s life, she likes him."

* * *

Sam landed Meatloaf's Bat on the plain next to the old crater. "Watch out for those rocks, Sam," Dean said. "The ramp’s gonna hit them."

"I’m not going to break the damn Bat," Sam muttered. "I’d like to see you do it better."

"Maybe next time I will."

"Sure. I’m not the one who clutched the docking release lever so hard he broke it, back on Ryloth."

"At least I know how to fix the docking release," Dean said. 

The ship settled onto her landing gear, and and they unstrapped and headed for the ramp. "See, perfectly clear. I can’t believe that you are still bitching about my parking, Dean."

"Look, the Bat has most of our credits sunk into her. I just think you could be a little more careful."

"Speaking of credits, you think Han left anything to sell in our stash here?"

"Not a chance," Dean said. A quick check of the area proved him right: there were some pieces of muffler, and half of a bumper, but the little Honda and the pickup they’d hidden were long gone. "He helped us out, but I swear to God, next time I meet him I am punching that guy in the face." 

"I don’t even know why we bothered to come back here," Sam said. "You don’t know it’s been a year."

"It’s been a year," Dean said. He wasn’t completely sure, and worried that they might have lost or gained some time when Sam brought them through from Earth to Parietes. But the watch he kept hidden in the glovebox of the Impala told him it was a year, and that was the best he can do.

"Can you tell?" Sam asked. "Do you feel different?"

Dean shrugged. He still remembered that first trip into hyperspace, the sudden feeling of release. Maybe it meant something, maybe not. He wanted to be back here, just in case, just in case something came for him, because they were sure as hell not taking Sam instead. "I don’t know. But this place makes the closest thing to tequila we’ve found yet."

"Yeah, but that cantina was really crappy. Even though we didn't know it at the time."

"Nah," Dean said. "I knew it at the time, all right. I'd never have tried that trick in the Roadhouse. Ellen would've murdered me. Or at least caught me and made me clean the place up."

Sam's mouth twisted. "You think they're OK, back there?"

"Yeah." He hoped so, anyway. "Bobby's probably happier not having to come get us out of trouble all the damn time." He would have loved to be able to show off the Bat to Bobby, to tell him how the thrusters and shields worked, and take him up into hyperspace. 

"Bobby wanted you to be free," Sam said. "I couldn't have done that spell, whatever it was, not without his help." He was quiet for a while, and they watched the larger of the two moons rise over the horizon. "You know, I thought about sending you through on your own. But I didn’t know if it would work at all, and I didn’t know where you could end up, and I couldn’t... Wherever it was, I didn’t want you to be alone." He paused again and swallowed. "And I want you to know, Dean, that it was totally worth it, just for that time you got so drunk you kissed a Bravaisian."

"Hey!" Dean said, and then louder, because Sam was laughing really hard. "Hey, she had a prehensile tongue!"

"She was blue!" Sam choked out. "And wrinkly! And she had a Wookiee for a boyfriend!" He wiped his eyes. "Admit it, Dean, you never stood a chance."

"I’m looking her up again, next time we swing past Takodana."

"Don’t say I never warned you."

"Nah," Dean said, "that Wookiee was all talk, no..." He paused. "No trousers. You ever wonder where Wookiees keep their junk? I mean, they don’t wear pants. We should ask--"

"No! We are never, ever asking Chewbacca about that."

"Come on, you know you’ve wondered..."

And far far in the future, a very long way away, hellhounds and demons searched for a soul they had been promised, but never found it.

end.


End file.
